


when the storm arrives would you be seen with me

by ninemoons42



Series: love and blades: a rebelcaptain AU [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - James Bond Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt Cassian Andor, Implied Past Relationships, Implied Relationships, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Real Events, a tribute to Chris Cornell, by which I mean modern era spy story violence, written in the style of Casino Royale 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian's a good spy, but sometimes even good spies might need to get ready to die.Except that in this case there's a benevolent not-quite-angel standing by to rescue him.





	when the storm arrives would you be seen with me

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't sleep, and then I woke up to the news that Chris Cornell had died. 
> 
> So I wrote this.
> 
> Inspiration from, of course, [You Know My Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnzgdBAKyJo).

Pain is a sharp lancing series of thorns barbed in his ribs, winding around his lungs. Feels like it tears at his heart. There’s no time to clutch at his chest. The footsteps behind him raise thundering echoes from the claustrophobic confines of the alley, from the blank cobblestones beneath his feet. The gun in his hands is a heavy, heavy, useless weight.

He should’ve given in to the impulse to carry extra magazines, and he regrets not giving in to that impulse now. Knife in his boot, sure, but he’s in no shape for any kind of close-quarters combat, not with the red slick pooling in the palms of his hands, not with pain like teeth gnawing at both arms. There are only too many times he can be missed by a hail of gunfire, and even getting grazed by a bullet hurts like an ironclad motherfucker, and he wants to just stop and collapse and he can’t. He won’t, not with the data drive concealed in the lining of his jacket, not with the names and numbers he’s keeping in his head, the intricate spiral of money and mayhem and threats to national security -- 

Water’s whispers, water’s flow, water’s moist rank exhaling mist. 

Shit. 

Oh shit.

He should have been paying more attention. 

Blood trickling out onto his skin, leaving him light-headed, leaving his judgment dangerously lacking. 

His pursuers have been herding him into a trap and he realizes that now.

The waste of several seconds to fumble and extract his knife from its hiding place.

If all else fails: he knows exactly how to drive that knife into the carotid artery. Some other unlucky fool’s lifeblood, or perhaps even his. 

Might be a little tricky to stab himself while he’s underwater, but he thinks he might still have the energy to do it -- and more importantly, he has the motivation -- he’s under a solemn promise: die first before he gives up his secrets, die first before he betrays his organization or his country or his friends --

Out of pavement. Out of sidewalk. Here are the wrought-iron rails scrolling, blood-warm in the roiling mists of a humid late night. Here are the splashes of light from guttering street lanterns, too conveniently far apart. Too many pools of shadow. The water gurgles, chokes, disquieted, several feet below street level. Motors in the distance. No point in trying to sprint for a boat that he can steal, for any other means of escape.

It has to be here and now.

Sticky and slick on his skin: his blood. He weaves and wavers, not entirely voluntarily. 

The first shadow that bursts onto him from the open alleyway squeaks when he drives his knife into the throat -- and then there’s just the bubbling sound of blood suddenly liberated from the confines of the flesh, ebbing away into a pool he can’t see and must avoid, unless he wants to go down and crack his own head on the stones.

No food, no sleep, too much bad gin, too many long hours. There are reasons why the people he works with refer to extended expeditions like the one he’s been on for the last three months as _dives_ \-- going deep for information, and so deep undercover that he’s more likely to be disavowed than rescued.

And he knew that, going in. Knows that, even now: there’s a better than even chance that if he dies tonight, some other lucky and late-coming fellow agent will get all the credit for everything he’s managed to recover. He knows that. He’s been that latecomer. He’s gone and marked himself for every other operative he’s had to pick up and haul home in a body bag. A scatter of tiny X’s on his shoulder, ink bleeding into his skin and into his blood, one for each of those bodies and one more extra. One for himself.

He signed his own will the day he was formally inducted into the organization; he witnessed the seals being pressed into his own death certificate soon after. Death is a necessary companion in this line of work. Death is his ally and his adversary and his constant albatross strung around his neck. 

Two more faceless bodies rush at him, and he slashes out with the knife: and he’d be a little more confident in the outcome of this fight were he not light-headed. No time for might-have-been, though, as he punches, blade-sharp, and there’s another thud, not too loud -- and then.

Blinding flash of pain right into his shoulder, the one that bears his tiny tattoos, and he grits his teeth and doesn’t completely manage to swallow the choking cry of outrage that claws its way out of his throat. He only has enough time, enough presence of mind, to transfer his knife to his other hand -- he can still fight, he’ll go down fighting, he’ll save a little strength for the strike to his own throat --

More running footsteps, and he wants to weep, and can’t. Won’t. 

No one will mourn him. He hopes no one will.

_Cassian Andor: license to kill confirmed --_

So the voice that cracks like whips and barbed wire into the night is a shock to his senses:

“Get the fuck down, Agent!”

No other agents here but him, bleeding, he thinks, vaguely: and the thought is driven out of his head as he dives for the cobblestones, as he reflexively tries to cover his head with his good hand, and this is a bad idea, he’s just asking to be shot in the back of his neck, but that would be such a wonderfully painless way to go --

And the incredible thunder of gunfire nearly deafens him, too loud, the sound hemmed in by the dense mists, so it seems to echo and echo in his head, the sound of inexorable death, hammering at him --

Sharp intake of breath nearby. Too close. The sharp click-click of a pair of heels, braced, turning and turning in all directions. 

The last time Cassian’d worked with an operative wearing heels, they -- the operative -- had carefully rouged their face and put on a pair of rhinestone-tipped false eyelashes, then buttoned up a severely tailored suit that concealed two sets of brass knuckles in the pockets. Death with one punch, with one sharp kick, and a clean getaway, a rare thing, and he remembers laughingly kissing that operative, jubilation and thanks --

“Fuck,” the person in heels mutters, and it’s one small snap of a syllable, but it’s enough to focus on. To refocus on. 

Somehow he manages to pick out the other moving shadow that’s bearing down on him -- on them -– and, tottering, he forces himself to stand. To plant his feet and be steady. 

“That yours?” he asks, only a little wary.

This person who might have saved his ass might also be here to square away the loose ends, and he’s including himself in that description.

“No.” Quick denial.

“I don’t trust you,” he says.

He changes his grip on the knife anyway: his fingertips gently feeling the point of the blade, before he winds up and throws, and that’s his last weapon except for his red-soaked fists, his wavering feet.

Another strangled scream, and the creeping shadow goes down.

Overhead, lightning suddenly flashes, and Cassian has a moment to _see_ :

The woman’s red-lacquered nails. An SMG, blocky and deadly in her hands. Lace peeking out from her cropped leather jacket. Heels, he’d expected that, but he’s a little surprised by the long skirt that falls nearly to her ankles -- at least, until she shifts as if to protect herself, or perhaps him. That’s when he sees the slit cut into the material.

Her face. How could he forget her face?

Black lipstick. Elegant lines winging out from the corners of her eyes. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been wearing deep purple eyeliner, glittering. A glare that could slice through steel and stone. The scar running along her jawline is still a mystery, in terms of where it had come from and why she chooses to keep it when it’s such a distinctive mark.

Her hair is the real surprise, he realizes, hacked short well shy of her shoulders. Spiky bits and pieces frame her cheekbones and cling to her throat, bogged down by the humid air, he thinks. 

“I know you don’t trust me.”

Her voice: nothing sweet about it, which is just as he remembers. Gravel-rough. Husky. 

The story that all the other operatives know about this woman is this: she’s survived some kind of horrific almost-burning, some incident in which she screamed and screamed through walls of smoke and acrid fumes, and that’s what wrecked her voice. That’s why she sounds the way she does.

Cassian, on the other hand, keeps his stories of her close to his chest: he remembers the spasmodic clutch of her hand, and the smoke-and-salt scent of her favorite perfume, and the vicious impact of her hands. He remembers the desperate speed of her kiss. The near-silence of her orgasm.

“I still trust you, you know,” she says, in the here and now, low rasp, and maybe he’s hearing things and maybe the blood loss is getting to him in earnest, but he thinks she almost sounds gentle.

So many words on the tip of his tongue, tangling. But all he says is her name: “Jyn.”

And this, too, he remembers: the wiry strength of her, as she pulls at him. As she takes up the weight of him on her shoulders, against her side. 

She jostles his bleeding and broken edges and he cries out in pain. He manages to keep it quiet.

He barely catches a glimpse of her shaking her head in apology, before darkness closes in on him at last and he clamps his mouth shut. She may be helping him but the secrets he’s carrying with him aren’t for her. 

He thinks he might not have completely convinced himself, even as he knows he’s spiraling down into unconsciousness.

(He’s not sure, but he thinks he hears her say: “How many times do I have to say I’ve got you, before you believe me?”)

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


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